A Wolf Among the Dead
by R.J. Moony
Summary: Remus mourns those he has lost. RLSB


Title: A Wolf Among the Dead

Author: R.J. Moony

E-mail: 

Rating: PG

Spoilers: If you don't know what happened in OotP by now...what rock have you been living under?

Disclaimer: Don't own 'em. Never have, never will, so quit asking and making me depressed.

Summary: Remus mourns those he has lost.

A/N: I wrote this piece for my Philosophy class. We were supposed to sit somewhere quiet (I choose a graveyard) for five minutes and then write anything that came to mind—song, poem, journal, story—for the next ten. I went almost double the ten minutes but Mr. Prosen doesn't have to know that. Oh, and this is my first attempt at anything even remotely serious and only my second attempt at slash, so feedback would be greatly appreciated.

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    I sit in a silence that is not a silence, broken only by my occasional flicking of a cigarette ash. The sound is unnaturally loud.

    I haven't been here in a long time. Not since they died. Imagine, two of the most important people in my life gone and I can't even bring myself to visit their graves. Not while he was away. Not while I still thought he, and I, were responsible for their deaths.

    But that's all changed now. The truth was revealed. And now he's gone, as well.

    I'm the only one left.

    I can't reconcile that fact as I lean against the cold stone wall of a crypt, smoke billowing to my left, caught in the early November wind. Pale sunlight shies weakly through the clouds and highlights the silver in my hair and I think, 'He's gone,' and it provokes no reaction. My world has come crashing down around me and I just sit among the dead grass and leaves and people, calmly smoking my fag—not even my preferred brand, but his—down to the filter. Even though I have never understood the practice of burying the dead, I can't bring myself to put it out on the marble behind me; the thought seems like swearing in a church. So I smash it against my shoe, the acrid smell of the singed rubber filling my over-sensitive nostrils.

    I don't know why I've come here, now. Was it to tell them the truth? But they already knew that. Perhaps if I had, too, they would still be alive. I squash down the resentment I feel at that though. I refuse to hate them even in the slightest. They were my friends, and they thought it was for the best.

    So what now? My cigarette is gone, and words stream from my mouth. Apologies, memories, news—"He's back again, there's a war, your son has grown so much, you would be so proud...he's dead." Maybe that's what I need to tell them. But then again, if he is dead then he's with them now, wherever the dead go.

    I wish I could join them, but I am either too strong for my own good, or too much of a coward to take my own life. Probably the former. It always has been. There's still a war, battles to fight, the world to save. Ha. That's what they were all trying to do. Save the world. And where has it gotten them? Two, burial plots in this infernal cemetery. One, gone forever, his body lost behind a curtain of rippling black silk. I can't even bury him with the others. I can't be buried _with_ him, the man who was everything to me and then some.

    It occurs to me, then, what I have come here to do. I pull a wood carving from my pocket, shaped like a dog and painted the deepest black, chipped a bit in places from the years it has seen. He gave it to me a long time ago, when we were still young and knew nothing of death and war and betrayal.

    I kneel beside their graves and dig my claws in to the frozen earth, pulling up grass and roots until I've dug deep enough. I bury the little black dog, bury him, bury a chapter of my life that was all at once the most amazing and painful of times. I smooth the soil back over and stand up quickly, in case anyone might see and get the wrong idea(1). It's time to leave this place, leave the three of them behind. There is still a war and a traitor and a teenage boy who looks more like his father every day. I am still needed.

    "Soon, my love. I will be with you soon. Until then, rest in peace."

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(1)People used to think that werewolves would roam graveyards at night, digging up fresh corpses to eat.

A/N: So...? Bad? Good? Melodramatic? Too soppy? Oi, I'm going nuts! Review!


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